Note: The following post was written by Sara Babinski, Design Manager for laminate and hardwood flooring, about her experience at the High Point Furniture Market, the largest furnishings industry trade show in the world. Held in North Carolina, this trade show features more than 2000 exhibitors and tens of thousands of new products in the home furnishing and décor industry.

We get it. You’re in a jam. You can’t reposition one more piece of furniture to cover that old, ragged carpet anymore. You know it needs to go, but who has time to redo a floor THIS time of year?! The final straw: you’re expecting a house full of guests for the holidays!

We can help. If you’re in a jam and you need to get the show on the road, you can get a floor in before the holidays. It might take a little wrangling, but we can definitely help you get it done faster.

Many of you ask us for tips or pointers for cleaning your new floor, and we want to make sure that you can enjoy your floor for years to come! Recently, we partnered with Melissa Maker, YouTube star and founder of the website CleanMySpace.com, to create some new floor cleaning videos for hardwood, laminate, and vinyl. The videos turned out great, and you can view them here.

In this post, we’ll look behind the scenes at how these videos came together.

Are you taking some of your summer to plan a Fall home improvement project? We’ve got some fantastic new hardwood flooring in varying widths, colors and gloss levels for you to choose from. In this post, we’ll take a look at our new floors and share some information about what makes each one unique.

New Performance Plus Hardwood

New floors in our Performance Plus Hardwood collection are great for busy homes with pets, kids, and lots of foot traffic!

In our last blog post, we talked about a few of the stunning new looks from our new Luxe Plank® Collection with FasTak™ Installation. With beautiful new designs, great performance in high-moisture areas like bathrooms, and simple installation, where can you go wrong? You can’t! And here’s a peek at the rest of the new collection.

What inspires you? Is it the texture of 200-year-old barn wood? The swirling grain in a fruitwood bowl? Or the colors in a branch of driftwood? We have some stunning new looks inspired by nature in our Luxe Plank® with FasTak™ Installation collection, and in this post, we’ll introduce you to two different new looks: Exotic hardwood and natural stones.

The Luxe Plank® Collection with FasTak™ Installation

First, let’s review what’s great about Luxe Plank.

Beautiful Designs – these new floors have vibrant hardwood and stone colors, along with textures that more ►

For several months now, we’ve had a Q&A feature available on our laminate flooring products that allows you to ask about what’s on your mind. We’ve been paying attention to what you’ve been asking, and this post is a collection of most-asked, most-wondered-about laminate questions from real flooring shoppers. Maybe there is something here that can help you with your flooring purchase!

Contemporary design…is that like the Jetson’s sweet futuristic pad? Not exactly. Contemporary (as opposed to Modern) design is characterized by a casual, livable style with smooth lines, neutral color palettes, and lots of light, open spaces.

There are few rules in Contemporary design, and most of them are made to be broken. It’s a bit eclectic in that frequently you’ll see industrial objects or materials like concrete and metal paired with more natural elements, like wood or greenery. Let’s take a look at the style of “now” with a five contemporary rooms from our photo archives.

If you think of flooring like a decadent, luxurious meal (and who doesn’t?), then you’ll find that pairing your floor with a rich, earthy color like Marsala is very natural. Pantone’s 2015 color of the year has a lot to love about it. Like, it’s named after a fortified wine. Good start!

According to the color gurus at Pantone, Marsala is a very versatile color, “equally appealing to men and women.” They refer to the color as “stirring and flavorful” and “sultry and subtle.” In terms of home décor over fashion, Pantone’s Color Intelligence crew loves Marsala. “Dramatic,” they opine, “and at the same time grounding.”

We’ve got a lot of advice for things that could happen during your Big Game party. Spills and tracked-in dirt? Seems legit. Spots caused by food, water, or animals? Could happen. Grease, lipstick, crayon, ink, heel marks? It’s starting to sound like quite a party! Chewing gum or candle wax? Things just started getting real…what kind of party is this again? Deep scratches or gouges? Well, we hope not, but we’ve even got that covered. more ►